Chapter 105: [22] Close Encounters of the Bus Kind 22 [From Beyond Arc]

Close Encounters of the Bus Kind

[22]

Eva and Odessa swiftly wrapped their arms around their squad captain. Leslie just sat there and wobbled slightly. She remained listless until she noticed both Ginas standing around her. Her head straightened and she put on a look of concern. Eva leaned right against Leslie‘s ear and clearly stated, “Things have happened to all of us.”

Hesitantly, Leslie lifted the headphone on the left side and Eva repeated her statement. She looked at each of them cautiously and replaced the headphones protectively over her ears. “I see,” was her swift response. She rocked in place and brushed back her hair bangs.

Nadia’s medical experience was limited to what she gathered from hospice nurses and listening to the medical class supplements with students like Erin. Her snap inkling was paranoid schizophrenia, bolstered by things she’d heard and seen in the media.

Leslie suddenly responded, “It’s not paranoid schizophrenia. My great-aunt had that, and I honestly think this is worse. I can just hear everything. Everyone. All around. And it’s not synesthesia. I looked that one up myself.”

Gina chirped, “Telepathy. Mind reading. Wild!” The other Gina rode that same sense of enthusiasm. Leslie turned to look in Gina‘s direction. She appeared to be reading her lips with what she said. Eva prepared to repeat those words for clarity, but Leslie raised some fingers and assured her that she got it.

“Yeah, telepathy. Mind reading. Only I’m being drowned by it, every single moment waking or sleeping. Music helps muffle it, but it’s like someone, everyone literally shouting their entire stream of consciousness by your ear. If I just block my ears, it doesn’t help, because it’s constantly in my head. I am feeling it, I am feeling everyone washing me away.” Her voice remained plaintive without rising above a reserved tone.

Eva scooted close to her and held her hands. She didn’t need to say anything. Leslie looked down at her cell phone playing heavy metal music and tapped the pause button. At the same moment, she set her headphones down in her lap, held her breath, and opened her eyes.

Leslie immediately jolted in place, as though she had lost her footing. She swiftly recovered and urgently glanced around at each of the girls. They could tell she was waging some unseen and unheard battle within. After making a quick orbit with her eyes, she snapped the headphones back on, pressed play again, and looked like she was about to throw up. She staggered over to the nearest trashcan and coughed several times before resolving that wasn’t going to work.

“Gina. A Gina died to a monster. Oh, that monster. No wonder you all look like that. Okay, all right. Aliens, ghosts, monsters, and powers. Nadia, pretty name by the way, Mr. Moore. You can understand language or got reality warped and maybe you can make things come alive or… oh sorry. I won’t say about that. Just speculation. Same as Odessa, she doesn’t know about hers. Eva. I’m so truly sorry. I don’t know how you hold it together. But you all know what she did. Gina, my gosh, at least you’ll never be lonely. Have you thought about whether the phone thing might be something else you can do? I know paranormal clichés and all that. At least, I know some now. But it happened outside too, and Coach hasn’t seen another monster since. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help, Coach. I’m not much help anyway, not usually and especially not today.” She gave a nervous, practically panicked chuckle that didn’t seem to be for anyone else but herself at that moment.

“So, sounds like the spacemen let us have two abilities each. Shame they didn’t let us decide, or it’s just some sadistic experiment. One that we can’t turn off and one we barely know how to use, although I have both in one. Well, it’s been interesting catching up. I guess you all should go now before I hear stuff that you don’t want me to hear, and I don’t wanna hear either. Okay?”

The girls looked at one another. Eva was pained and uncomfortable, but she soon dropped her hands and nodded silently. Copy Gina seemed vaguely annoyed, but she had been wearing that expression for several minutes now. Leslie quickly amended that she didn’t mean to lump together “the twins“ but she “was trying not to dig too deep.” The two Ginas glanced at one another but didn’t say anything.

Erin and Odessa looked like they wanted to do something more. Coach could hear her own thoughts bouncing around her head like some long-ago class description she remembered of photons hopping around the depths of the sun and taking thousands or millions of years to escape. She was bombarding her student with the ambling, twisting, fighting flurry of things stuck in her head.

All she really wanted to give her was reassurance and to know how much she deeply cared for all of them. And so many other things, so many beautiful things, that she frantically wanted to articulate, but she couldn’t because this kid would see the process, the rough draft, and already know what was coming before she spoke. Leslie gave her a quick glance and a sympathetic nod.

Leslie turned to leave towards the parking lot, but Luna suddenly stood in her way. She had her arms out as far as she could stretch, and she looked up at Leslie with a stern but determined expression. Opening her mouth to speak, Leslie soon paused, and her face underwent a journey of expressions in quick succession. She appeared bothered, then confused, and curious, followed by tense uncertainty. Slowly, the redhead crept in a circle around the young girl. It would’ve been an easy thing to just run away, and her legs still tensed for that possibility. Nadia didn’t know what to make of it, but her little sister had been as inscrutable a puzzle since she arrived at the Baris house as anything else.

Actually, though, she did recall when they first met, and Nadia was still reeling from the reality of having such a colossal family and an attentive mother. Luna behaved differently for a short time. She had the energy, chaos, and raw emotions expected of someone her age. Then, Nadia started to settle in. She attempted to process the magnitude.  Soon, however, Agent Cross showed up. Next thing she knew, quiet, reserved Luna clung to her urgently.

Leslie glanced over at her with narrowed eyes and said, “Sasha told me over the phone that some guy named Cross stopped at her door, but she was away at the time. Sorry, if everything I’m saying comes off as disjointed or confusing, I’m not certain about what things were and weren’t said out loud. But I’m pretty sure the rest of the team wasn’t left out of whatever happened to us, from their calls. Tatianna and Aubrey also texted me about urgent concerns, but I really didn’t feel like talking at the time. Still not sure how I feel…”

She looked down nervously at Luna, who was easily challenging her usual fostered sense of stoicism. Luna dropped her arms and reached out a hand, as if to shake Leslie’s. Cautiously, Leslie took it, and the little girl slowly guided her to sit on the chilly cement.

Nadia watched with uncertainty as her little sister motioned to her ears. Leslie gave a little nod and dropped the headphones to her lap with a heavy sigh. Eva turned off the playback for her. Leslie’s breathing became briefly labored and she started trembling. She shut her eyes.

“Look at me,” Luna said calmly. Gradually, Leslie cracked her eyes open and focused on the little girl.

“Take a deep breath,” she said next. Despite Leslie’s best efforts, she started coughing and looked flushed and confused. Shivers in her legs started to spread up to the rest of her. She looked like a ball of tightly wound anxiety about to rip open. Tears returned to her face as she murmured, “I can’t. I can’t do it. I can’t.”

“You can do anything you resolve yourself to do. Look at me and breathe.” Nadia was bewildered as her little sister seemed more like a human Yoda guru than a kid. Who was this girl?

It took some doing, but Leslie soon got her breathing and the shaking under control. When she calmed down, Luna issued the next step. She told her to focus on anything that relaxed her. For Leslie, it was standing in the court but also flying through the air to spike the ball. The uncertainty drifted away, and she became steady and calm. She even smiled. It wasn’t a perfect focus and sometimes she needed to close her eyes and reestablish that thought but soon it was easy despite the discomfort of where and how she was sitting.

So they didn’t appear that unusual, the other girls sat around them. It wasn’t the greatest thing to sit down there, especially with the relative thinness of their jeans. Nadia didn’t know how Leslie could bear it, but she looked at Erin. Her girlfriend was assuming a similar position to her little sister, and she appeared to ease into the same focus.

Erin had some familiarity with varieties of meditation. She had experimented with it on the volleyball team but most of the girls at the time were too high-energy to get much out of it. Back in college, she used it to gradually get over her family crap. I didn’t solve everything, but it helped her control the emotions that she wanted to feel about her past and direct them towards positivity. As Luna’s surreal lesson continued, Erin recognized many of the methods she employed. She spoke simply and succinctly, guiding Leslie.

At the culmination, it seemed less like Luna was reciting numbers and particular phrases for Leslie so much as providing support for her as she worked through the levels of her concentration. Leslie looked legitimately and totally relaxed in her body. Dry salt beds of her tears still reddened her cheeks, but it didn’t seem like she needed them. Awe and delight actually crossed her features as she gazed around at the group. The nearby people in small, ambling crowds all seemed to decide that this strange little circle of hippie girls was not worth complaining about since it was easy to go around them and there were plenty of other places to sit.

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“I can turn it down. It’s still there, but it feels no worse than someone muttering. How did you do that?”

Luna simply answered, “You did that.”

“But how did you know what I needed to do?” She squeezed her headphones against her chest.

To this, Luna gave one of her typical shrugs but also answered, “I just did. Feel better?”

Adamantly, Leslie nodded her head. “I feel like I got my life back. Thank you so much. What’s your name?” Luna gave her full name with a little bow and a faint, cute smile.

Nadia tipped her head with curiosity. Leslie had gleaned so much about each of them in just a few moments. How was it that Leslie hadn’t come up with her little sister‘s name from all that? One more mystery, but at least she could ask her.

The Leslie who rose to her feet moments later felt like the one that Paul often saw bounding towards the bus after a resounding victory, leading the charge and setting the tone. That exuberance bled off into warming the other girls’ disposition. Everyone gave their captain the best embraces, with Coach going last. Leslie then had a hug to provide Luna, who calmly accepted being swung around and celebrated.

Nadia smiled, but her thoughts were full of questions. Leslie raised a finger and announced to everyone that even though she had “this thing” that she was finally figuring out how to control, there was also a second. Just like they had surmised. Working through everything, Nadia wondered what hints of ability Odessa had in mind and why she wasn’t prepared for even those thoughts to get out. The hint from Leslie about Gina made sense to Nadia. One ability that just happens and one ability that needs work.

Although, she was uncertain where Gina‘s abilities settled. Perhaps somehow recharging a phone was just a thing that she could do now. That was definitely a fortunate ability, although her own that just happened wasn’t bad either. Having a future as a universal translator sure sounded like a good gig, even though she was already beginning to miss the routine and joy of driving a large bus.

There was one curious moment though, when Eva asked whether Leslie was alright, since they were only mere minutes past her so broken and sobbing. She looked back to Luna and seemed to invite the little girl to say something about whether she was moving too fast.

“Little by little, the bird makes its nest. That means, little by little, the bird makes its nest. Or little strokes fell great oaks. I’m not going to say that I solved this, but I took a big step. And that’s actually an appropriate analogy. Let me show… What’s wrong?”

The other Gina gestured with her fingers and pointed out that Leslie just said the same phrase twice. To this, Leslie was especially confused and asked if Gina knew French. Neither of them did. Nadia had a suspicion and used her phone to pull up a foreign quote online and read it aloud. She recited one in German, then Italian, followed by some rarer languages. As she read it and as they received it, there was no confusion about what it meant, and she didn’t need to check for the translation below. Somehow, for some reason, they all had what appeared to be her translation capability. Were they just gaining each other's abilities by being around one another? was Nadia‘s first question. She had to run an experiment, and this was a better way than experimenting around a monster who wanted to eat them with Erin’s ability.

She pitched the idea to the group and, of course, Leslie got it first. Open up something to read in a foreign language and then separate themselves one by one as a group. Since Gina noted losing sight of the monster as soon as she got away from them, it seemed most probable that she wasn’t the one that allowed them to share it, but she would be a good first test case for how far it stretched. At this point, none of them gave a flying ficus, as Eva would term it, about what the other shoppers thought of their shenanigans that seemed to border on performance art.

Both Ginas wanted to hold onto the phone as they measured out the distance. There was some tussling with the phone but none of it came to blows. Nadia figured that the copy Gina was probably considering that if she could get the phone away from her creator then she could possibly masquerade as the original since the phone was the metric by which they decided who was who. However, it was also clear to Nadia that the copy didn’t seem to show any aptitude for charging phone batteries or creating copies of herself. It had managed to pick up the shared ability though, which raised questions about how limited or extensive it might be.

Fifty feet wound up being the limit whether they were looking at the group or not. That was when both Ginas lost their ability to naturally recognize French. Focusing on those they didn’t know for sure, the girls sent Odessa on a walk of 50 feet. She also lost and then recovered the language ability. Just to make sure, they sent Luna away.

It was resolving a certain way, but Nadia was also a big question, especially for Luna. She tried to recall if her little sister had given any acknowledgment to the monster in the abandoned Sears. She had been laser-focused on telling them all to run and dragging her in a certain direction but it didn’t seem like she focused on that beast in particular.

While Luna was walking away, Leslie casually stepped over to Nadia‘s side and whispered in her ear.

“Your little sister, Luna, I couldn’t hear her thoughts at all. I don’t know what that means. I feel bad about talking about her behind her back but… You should probably ask her about that. Family and keeping secrets and all that. Not that I’m the one to talk. Sorry.”

The others tried to listen in, but she kept it low enough that they didn’t seem to hear. Nadia kept on her best poker face. Sending Luna almost to the parking lot, all by herself, activated a deep-seated fear in Nadia that some stranger might grab her but had no other effect.

Eva sighed, raised her eyebrows, and stretched her legs as she quietly declared, “So, it’s me. I am the reason we saw that monster and I’m probably no no no… I can’t go down that road. Alright, let’s settle this.”

At fifty feet, the language ability went away for everyone except for Nadia. But the puzzling thing was that it didn’t come back when she returned. Leslie immediately took a frantic, large jump away from them.

“What if it’s random? What if you catch what I have? Stay away stay away, please. I can’t bear to see that.”

Eva closed the distance between her and the squad captain. “Don’t be like that double dipping duo over there. It’ll be fine. We need to find out how this works and I think we have. If anyone has a problem with sharing anything then all we need to do is walk away or I can walk away. It’s under control and it’s not worth freaking out about. Come on, why don’t you show us your awesome other ability?” 

[I have a question at the end of the chapter again to help with suggestions for where the story should go. I'm actually not that far ahead this time and I am wide open for possibilities for this particular story. Feel free to add an idea which doesn't show up in the options. Also, if you see any random typos or uncapitalized starts of sentences, please pass them along. I have to cut down on my editing due to release speed and my programs don't seem to be catching lowercase sentences. Thank you for reading!]

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